Free Thinking - Cities and Safety
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 16 December 2015
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tonight, Philip Dodd and guests reflect on safe cities, past and present - on how literature, technology, law and social engineering imagine safety and its absence in cities - and whether safe cities are in the end an oxymoron.
Philip is joined by senior urban fellow at LSE Cities, Adam Greenfield, writer Beatrix Campbell, criminologist Peter Fussey, director of The Runnymede Trust Omar Khan, and historian of London Jerry White, who will be discussing Joseph Conrad's terrorist novel, The Secret Agent.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Can I just say? |
| 0:01.5 | You're about to listen to a BBC podcast. |
| 0:04.0 | It's such a wonderful listen. |
| 0:05.6 | So nice. |
| 0:06.5 | There are loads more like it on BBC sounds. |
| 0:08.8 | Different paces, different heights. |
| 0:10.6 | The roof is buckling. |
| 0:11.9 | Where you can also listen to live sports commentary. |
| 0:14.2 | It's right foot goes for goal. |
| 0:16.7 | And then enjoy even more podcasts full of analysis and reaction to the big stories. |
| 0:21.7 | The stat that is astonishing is they ended with the lowest amount of possession. |
| 0:25.2 | And she's had to live with that. |
| 0:26.8 | So if you love sport, a passion, it's almost like a religion. |
| 0:29.7 | Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:31.8 | Sort of expecting that every week now. |
| 0:34.6 | Hello, on tonight's programme, there's one idea that's told through the speeches of politicians |
| 0:41.3 | since the Paris attacks. |
| 0:43.5 | We need to keep our cities safe. |
| 0:47.1 | Hollande, Cameron, Obama, they've all emphasised this idea of safety and the first duty |
| 0:52.8 | of governments is everyone agrees to keep its citizens unharmed. |
| 0:57.0 | In 2017 the US Embassy is moving to Battersea in South London. |
| 1:03.0 | Not exactly central, but a new site means security measures can be designed in. |
... |
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